Lithium chronology.
This isn't really a big deal, but I was reading Eric Alterman going after Joe Klein again today. Eric writes:
Which reminds me: The point about Klein's [December 2000] prediction about Bush is not so much that it was wrong -- as were almost all MSM pundits not merely about Bush but also about Gore, whom Joe Klein called "harsh and stupid," for his 2000 convention speech and who he said "looked like a madman" when he gave his now famously prophetic Commonwealth Club speech opposing Bush's war, about which Klein's fellow Time columnist Charles Krauthammer, a psychiatrist, said the vice president had "gone off his lithium" -- but that he insisted his prediction for Bush's future was the "only" conceivable course.
I've see variants on this (minor) mistake time after time in the liberal press, not just from Alterman. Krauthammer's comment about Gore being "off his lithium again" came after Gore's May 2004 speech to MoveOn.org, not the earlier 2002 one to the Commonwealth Club. In fact, I would guess that when Joe Klein himself made the comment last year about Gore looking "like a madman", he was also confusing the two speeches.
Also, at the risk of being a jinx, is it maybe fair to argue that the liberal blogosphere/counter-noise-machine or whatever you want to call it has actually had some success in influencing the way Gore is covered in big media these days? A case in point is the recent Mark Leibovich / Patrick Healy NYT piece about Gore returning to DC to testify on Capital Hill. A lot of bloggers were angry at the blase tone of the piece and the "recovering alcoholic" line, and their arguments are right on general principles -- the piece is a pretty awful piece of journalism. But it's also pretty... flattering, if you read down a ways. Although somewhat less so than this recent WaPo piece.
Granted, this could have more to do with the media's obsession with celebrity than any pressure from liberal bloggers and watchdogs exerting itself on the press corps' residual guilt. And this harmful and disingenous "Science" piece by William Broad certainly stands as a fairness-and-balance counterexample. Still, it seems to me we've come a long ways from the lithium days of 2004.
It's enough at least to give one hope. At this rate, maybe someday we'll even reach a stage of discourse at which it's unacceptable for a mainstream pundit to call a prominent female politician a bitch.
Which reminds me: The point about Klein's [December 2000] prediction about Bush is not so much that it was wrong -- as were almost all MSM pundits not merely about Bush but also about Gore, whom Joe Klein called "harsh and stupid," for his 2000 convention speech and who he said "looked like a madman" when he gave his now famously prophetic Commonwealth Club speech opposing Bush's war, about which Klein's fellow Time columnist Charles Krauthammer, a psychiatrist, said the vice president had "gone off his lithium" -- but that he insisted his prediction for Bush's future was the "only" conceivable course.
I've see variants on this (minor) mistake time after time in the liberal press, not just from Alterman. Krauthammer's comment about Gore being "off his lithium again" came after Gore's May 2004 speech to MoveOn.org, not the earlier 2002 one to the Commonwealth Club. In fact, I would guess that when Joe Klein himself made the comment last year about Gore looking "like a madman", he was also confusing the two speeches.
Also, at the risk of being a jinx, is it maybe fair to argue that the liberal blogosphere/counter-noise-machine or whatever you want to call it has actually had some success in influencing the way Gore is covered in big media these days? A case in point is the recent Mark Leibovich / Patrick Healy NYT piece about Gore returning to DC to testify on Capital Hill. A lot of bloggers were angry at the blase tone of the piece and the "recovering alcoholic" line, and their arguments are right on general principles -- the piece is a pretty awful piece of journalism. But it's also pretty... flattering, if you read down a ways. Although somewhat less so than this recent WaPo piece.
Granted, this could have more to do with the media's obsession with celebrity than any pressure from liberal bloggers and watchdogs exerting itself on the press corps' residual guilt. And this harmful and disingenous "Science" piece by William Broad certainly stands as a fairness-and-balance counterexample. Still, it seems to me we've come a long ways from the lithium days of 2004.
It's enough at least to give one hope. At this rate, maybe someday we'll even reach a stage of discourse at which it's unacceptable for a mainstream pundit to call a prominent female politician a bitch.
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